“Stand up,” Sia said once more, and McManus climbed upright and stayed there somehow, his open, straining mouth making him look as if he were waiting to belch. The bullet had apparently gone through the calf of his leg; there was comparatively little blood. He moved his lips weakly, saying, “The gun.”

“Go away,” the voice said. “Never come near this house again. Never come near her again. She is under my protection, and if you trouble her, you will die. She is one of mine. Go now.”

Again Suzy declared, “Oh, he can’t, don’t you see he can’t walk? We have to call a doctor.” But Sia gave no sign of having heard; she moved her disheveled head slightly, and McManus, as if on wires, made a single lurching hop toward the door. His face was as white and wet as cottage cheese, and the reek of his pain burned in Farrell’s nostrils.

A plump figure appeared in the living room doorway, trailed by a tiptoeing Briseis. Farrell recognized the man as one of Sia’s more wistful clients. He said, “The front door was open, so I just,” peering at the scene with a ruminant’s unfocused near-interest. Nothing in his round, freckled face, puckered thinly like an aging balloon, suggested even momentarily that he smelled gunpowder or saw the smashed lamp or any blood.

Farrell, Suzy, and McManus gaped silently at him, but Sia nodded calmly, saying in her normal voice, “Hello, Robert, just go on along.” She stepped aside to let him by, and he went up the stairs without looking back. No one spoke or moved until the door of Sia’s office rattled overhead.

Suzy went to support McManus, but he pushed her away violently, summoning all his numbed vitality to make himself step toward Sia. Over his shoulder he said to Suzy, “You better go on up there, baby, the man’s waiting.” Farrell fully expected to see him lunge barehanded up the stairs at Sia; his voice was slow with pain, and with the loneliness of great hatred, and he looked at Sia fearlessly. “One of yours,” he said. “Yeah, I bet she’s picked up a few new tricks since you’ve had her. Hey, I’d pay to learn them, I can pay.”